Reply With QuoteNon c'è piu sordo di chi non vuole sentire
None so deaf as those who will not hear
Member
Italy is a bizarre outlier. Many more elderly infected there than other countries. Corona kills the elderly and the diseased. Not kids.
S Korea 8800 cases, 102 deaths
Portugal 1280 cases, 12 deaths
Iceland 473 cases, 1 death
US 22,177 cases, 278 deaths
Iceland has the highest testing per capita in the world. Very accurate numbers.
S Korea has the third highest testing in the world per capita. Very accurate numbers.
When people focus on Italy, they are focusing on a single outlier. Not scientific. These are CoronaPorn addicts. The numbers are just not that bad. Sorry.
Shutting down the service/educational economy doesn't reduce spread. Community transmission (bars, restaurants, stores, concerts, schools) is very low. READ THE DATA.
Even household transmission is only 10%.
READ THE DATA
We are destroying our economy and it is not effective in flattening the curve.
This is a travesty.
Member
Non c'è piu sordo di chi non vuole sentire
None so deaf as those who will not hear
Member
"The figures for coronavirus are eye-watering. But what is not clear - because the modellers did not map this - is to what extent the deaths would have happened without coronavirus."
and
"Every year more than 500,000 people die in England and Wales: factor in Scotland and Northern Ireland, and the figure tops 600,000.
The coronavirus deaths will not be on top of this. Many would be within this "normal" number of expected deaths. In short, they would have died anyway."
Coronavirus deaths: What we don't know - BBC News
Member
Ah, I see, Rip, not really interested in discussion - just throwing spitballs from the back of the class. Why does that not particularly surprise me?
TMPHBITEU
Originally Posted by rudd
The media seems to be coming around. CNN ran a calm-down piece yesterday, apparently realizing that if the airports close nobody will be available to watch their bullshit programming.
Absolutely true.
That was the last one you get, Tallison.
Member
I'm very interested in this. Can you point me to some specific data please? This is a genuine question. I'm in a higher risk group by age but what I see happening to my community and the economy and the long term effects of all this fear concerns me greatly.
Full agreement on the travesty.
Member
Rip you seem to have inadvertently included my post in abduality’s...
Member
Completely agree with this. But the boy who cried wolf is perhaps appropriate to invoke here.
I wish you no harm, Itomo, and I think it's best we abstain from engaging each other for now.
TMPHBITEU
Yes, I suspected that. Sorry, distracted.
Member
Fuck. I know I said I wasn't going to post again, but I am getting so fucking tired of seeing people literally ignore the evidence in front of them on the grounds that (a) an expert presented it, and (b) it doesn't mesh with their biases.
Jesus Christ -- literally nobody is saying that. What the fuck would actually convince you that you might be wrong about something? Evidence is clearly not one of those things.
I'm serious: please tell me what would convince you that we have a serious problem on our hand, serious enough to warrant Draconian interventions like shutting down businesses, restaurants etc.
If the answer is nothing, fine. That's obviously a totally irrational position, but then at least we don't have to try to have a rational discussion anymore.
If the answer is 100,000 deaths (or pick whatever number you like): that literally just means you have completely failed to understand the concept of exponential growth. That's not a hypothetical thing, it's not something to do with testing -- for fuck's sake, the basic stats of epidemics isn't hard. One person infects two, two infect four, four infect eight... And 100,000 deaths become 200,000 deaths before you have even the slightest chance to react.
I'm 49. So no, I'm obviously just a naive commie. But again: who the fuck has actually claimed that politicians haven't done stupid or evil things before? What does that have to do with anything?
You have the case numbers and death numbers -- and their evolution -- right in front of you. You could literally work out for yourself on a piece of paper that, unless we somehow manage to suppress this thing fast, it is going to be a shit show. In fact, you don't even need to do that -- you could just watch the TV to see what's happening in Italian hospitals. And in a few days I'm pretty sure the "but that's just Italy" argument won't sound as convincincing anymore (even though it's so obviously based sound statistical concerns, like "Italians are all fat, unhygienic old smokers who live with a crappy socialist health care system"). Because then the reports will be from New York City.
You never answered my question about this: if COVID19 is half as bad as those stupid experts think it is, do you honestly think we won't have an economic collapse, regardless of whether we keep restaurants open right now? Right now, people have to be coerced to comply with social distancing interventions. But I have a hunch this won't be a problem at all anymore once enough people have died. And what's your solution to this? Are you then all of a sudden going to become a government interventionist and force people to go to work and spend money in restaurants? Because I don't think they'll be all that keen to leave the house anymore at that point. So my question is what you'll have gained by keeping things open another 4 weeks or whatever? As near as I can tell, the answer is lots of dead people.
So it seems to me that the only semi-rational and ethically defensible position for you must be that you are certain that this is all just fear-mongering, i.e. that there is no realistic chance that this outbreak is anything like as bad as the people who study outbreaks say. But all you have ever provided as evidence for such a position is whatever random blog post or Medium article you could find that happens to agree with what you obviously know must be true. At least I've actually done my homework.
There is a great saying in German:
"Weil nicht sein kann, was nicht sein darf"
There isn't a pithy translation for it, but if you're interested I'm sure you can find out what it means. I thought tallison might enjoy it, at least. I think it gets at the heart of why so many otherwise smart people are so desperately looking for any justification -- no matter how tenuous or irrational -- that might allow them to cling to what they want to believe.
Incidentally, I hope you all get that my tone about isn't panic -- it's frustration. On a personal level, I'm not panicking at all. I'm just sitting in my middle class house, following the guidelines to work remotely, with a reasonably (but not stupidly) well-stocked pantry. I don't even think that the supply chain of food and toilet paper is likely to fail completely. So I'm good. I just think it would be incredibly sad if lots of lives would be unnecessarily lost and ruined.
Anyway, I've never hoped more that I'm wrong about literally everything.
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